"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it"Aneurin Bevan

Saturday, 18 December 2010

Train Crash

Earlier this week, before the operating framework or the responses to the white paper "consultation" were published Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times published a damning piece about what lies ahead for the NHS. It is worth repeating here.

A senior management consultant has been privately warning anyone in government who will listen of the risk of a train wreck.“They all hear the words, nod wisely, but give no outward sign that they are going to challenge what is going on,” he says. “It is going to be very messy.”

This is frightening, it appears that no one is willing to Lansley aside and tell him to stop. Timmins quotes the chief executive of one of Britain’s biggest private hospital groups:

“If I went to my board and said that I’d told my senior management that I was merging all their posts before making them redundant in two years’ time; that I’d told all my finance people they too will be going; and that I was going to get some other people to run the business; and that while I can’t yet define it precisely, it will involve the nurses – well, I think it would be me who was out of a job.”